Friday, January 28, 2011

Quote of the Day

"That was another one of those 'WTF' moments, the, when he a, uh, so often repeated 'the Sputnik Moment' that he, uh, would aspire Americans to, uh, celebrate, and, uh, he needs to remember that, uh, what happened back then with the former communist USSR and their victory in that, er, sss, race to space, yeah, they won but they also incurred so much debt at the time that it resulted in the inevitable collapse of the Soviet Union."

Speaking of WTF moments. I think she may have had a valid point in there somewhere. I can't tell you, like, how, uh, disturbing that is... but I'll console myself with the knowledge that there's no way she came up with it herself.

For most of the time, during that spewing of verbal diarrhea, I couldn't help but notice how much Greta was looking like Bruce Jenner. I know that's kind of sophomoric, but maybe it was some kind of subconcious defense mechanism kicking in to keep me from wanting to bang my head repeatedly on a hard surface.

I think the funniest parts of her commentary actually follow this quote, when she starts talking about spudnuts, a delicacy I'd never heard of until yesterday.

Among other things making her spudnut riff funny:

*the word spudnut is inherently funny;

*it turns out the spudnut is a fried potato flour doughnut that was popular in the 1940s, conjuring images of trenchcoated police dicks out of a Hammett story eating them by the boxful on a stakeout;

*the Spudnut Shop Palin mentions is one of about three dozen former franchises surviving from a once-prosperous global chain that expanded rapidly after WWII and collapsed near the end of the Cold War, which hits a little close to home--anyway, it certainly isn't something I'd want to emulate (also, I hope it's not symbolic that the main thing a Spudnut Shop produces is a deep-fried zero);

It'll be interesting, given her current trajectory and deleterious effect on the party, to watch for Fox subtly turning on her. Or maybe they realize if they keep putting her on the air she'll just do it to her self. Though little things like telling her "Wear your shiny silver shirt, that looks presidential" might be a clue to what they're up to over there.

I get what you're saying, guys, but I do have my reasons for thinking this could be the end -- at least the very beginning of the end. I'll explain why later, but it has to do with the fact that as an overexposed multi-media sensation -- a famous-for-being-famous celebrity in the Paris Hilton vein -- she was always destined to burn out. Her popularity has to wane; that's the natural order of things.

There's actually a far more sinister dimension to it (warning: I'm about to get all geeky).

In the Dune novels, the evil Harkonnen family send two brothers to enslave the planet. First they send Glossu "The Beast" Rabban, "[all] the Harkonnen cruelty and sadism but without the intelligence."

After brutalizing the local population, the Harkonnen plan is to replace Rabban with his younger brother Feyd, assuming the locals will practically welcome him as their savior after what they've endured.

Substitute the names Palin and Bachmann, and you see where I am going here.

Palin's the false prophet. She'll gather the flock and pave the way for the real anti-christ, who is already positioning herself for her run at the White House. And 57 million people, who already proved how gullible they are, will embrace her as "the smart Sarah Palin."

"For most of the time, during that spewing of verbal diarrhea, I couldn't help but notice how much Greta was looking like Bruce Jenner. I know that's kind of sophomoric, but maybe it was some kind of subconcious defense mechanism kicking in to keep me from wanting to bang my head repeatedly on a hard surface."

God, I was thinking the same thing. And didn't she already have plastic surgery?

We should take bets on the next acronym she uses to describe something her poor little pea brain can't piece together on its own. OMG? BRB? TTYL? "PALIN 2012: LMFAO!"

Hit with a tough question about his administration’s policy in Afghanistan and Iraq on Thursday, President Obama made a muddled mess out of his plans for withdrawing troops from the region.

Obama swapped “Iraq” for “Afghanistan” when he answered a question on YouTube about whether he still believes soldiers need to die in the wars there.

“As I said, we will be out of Afghanistan by the end of this year,” Obama said, a fairly significant misstatement of his administration’s Afghanistan policy, which doesn’t call for a troop withdrawal until 2014. The misstep was picked up by the Future of Capitalism blog.

“We’ll have a relationship with Iraq in the same way we have relationships with many countries around the world,” Obama continued, correcting himself.

The YouTube moderator interjected, in an effort to clarify Obama’s statement. “So out of Afghanistan, as in ...”

But Obama continued his answer, finally getting his wars sorted out.

“Afghanistan is a tougher situation,” he finished. “We’re going to begin to phase down our troop levels, and we’ve agreed with our allies that by 2014, this will be an Afghan-led effort.”

Okay, Anon 1:14 (and someday I'll figure out why they're almost always anonymous) ... that's one down. He only has 327 completely incoherent public word salads to go and the Harvard Law grad will be in Sarah Palin's league.

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